Friday, October 14, 2005

CPI

Barry Ritholtz does a thorough take-down of the nonsense headline that inflation is under control. That's the headline after today's release of inflation numbers for September. He makes the points well, go read his post if you're interested in economic stuff.

If you don't want the details. Just take a look at this chart from Barry's site:

What do you think?

Barry takes a look at wages in the face of these non-increases in prices:

the Labor Department reported "real average weekly earnings of U.S. workers, adjusted for inflation, fell 1.2% in September." That marks the third consecutive monthly decline of real wages (average hourly earnings rose 0.2%).

So the only place where there is no inflation is in the pocketbooks of the consumer, whom I must remind you accounts for 70% of the economy.